- Born
- Died
- Birth nameEnid Diana Elizabeth Rigg
- Height5′ 8½″ (1.74 m)
- British actress Dame Diana Rigg was born on July 20, 1938 in Doncaster, Yorkshire, England. She has had an extensive career in film and theatre, including playing the title role in "Medea," both in London and New York, for which she won the 1994 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play.
Rigg made her professional stage debut in 1957 in the Caucasian Chalk Circle, and joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1959. She made her Broadway debut in the 1971 production of "Abelard & Heloise." Her film roles include Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream (1968); Lady Holiday in The Great Muppet Caper (1981); and Arlene Marshall in Evil Under the Sun (1982). She won the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress for the BBC miniseries Mother Love (1989), and an Emmy Award for her role as Mrs. Danvers in the adaptation of Rebecca (1997). In 2013, she appeared with her daughter Rachael Stirling on the BBC series Doctor Who (2005) in an episode titled "The Crimson Horror" and plays Olenna Tyrell on the HBO series Game of Thrones (2011).
From 1965 to 1968, Rigg appeared on the British television series The Avengers (1961) playing the secret agent Mrs. Emma Peel. She became a Bond girl in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), playing Tracy Bond, James Bond's only wife, opposite George Lazenby. She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) at the 1988 Queen's New Years Honours for her services to drama. She was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) at the 1994 Queen's Birthday Honours for her services to drama.
Dame Diana Rigg died of lung cancer on September 10, 2020, she was 82 years old.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Pedro Borges
- SpousesArchibald Hugh (Archie) Stirling(March 25, 1982 - August 31, 1990) (divorced, 1 child)Menachen Gueffen(July 6, 1973 - September 3, 1976) (divorced)
- Children
- ParentsLouis RiggBeryl Helliwell
- Deep husky yet smooth voice
- A smoker from the age of 18, Rigg was still smoking 20 cigarettes a day in 2009. By December 2017, she had stopped smoking after serious illness led to heart surgery, a cardiac ablation, two months earlier. A devout Christian, she commented that: "My heart had stopped ticking during the procedure, so I was up there and The Good Lord must have said, 'Send the old bag down again, I'm not having her yet!'".
- October 20, 2003 - British courts awarded her $63,832 and $134,000 in court expenses in her libel suit against Britain's "Evening Standard" and "Daily Mail" newspapers. They had written that she was an embittered woman who held British men in low regard.
- She was voted the sexiest-ever television star by TV Guide in the United States.
- Born in Yorkshire, the daughter of a railroad engineer, she moved with her family to India at the age of two months and resided there until she was 8 (she learned to speak Hindi).
- More properly known as Dame Diana Rigg, the female equivalent of the title "Sir" when knighted. In June 1994, she was made DBE (Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire) by Queen Elizabeth II for her long contributions to theater and film.
- [on hitting middle age] I am devastated at what has happened. I have completely disappeared. I am totally invisible. I never really liked my sexy label but on the other hand, to disappear so totally is quite startling.
- I don't go without make-up, though. I rather like that transformation in the morning from "I don't want to look in the mirror"; then you start pulling yourself together. It's a rather nice present to yourself that you can still do that.
- I had an eye job in my early forties. Someone took a photograph of me in a play, after I'd lost a lot of weight, and I did look like Miss Havisham. I thought, "I have to do something - I'm too young to look like this." So I went and had an eyelift once the play was finished, and the doctor said that it would last only about eight years. I imagined after that it would all cave in with a terrible groaning sound, like scaffolding, but it didn't, and I haven't had anything done since. I look at women who are my age who look absolutely ravishing and I know they have had something done. Well, why not?
- If I meet a woman who is immaculately groomed, I really admire her discipline. I grew up admiring out-of-this-world screen goddesses, such as Ava Gardner and Rita Hayworth, but I have to acknowledge that I haven't the patience for getting dressed up very often - at my age you think: "Why bother?". Now that I'm older, I don't go to premieres or first-night parties, not even my own.
- I didn't like my Bond Girl outfits. The designer was a friend of the directors and I thought they were too boring and middle-aged for my character. The right costumes are essential for getting into a part; I've witnessed many costume parades with grumpy or even weeping actors because they've been put into the wrong thing.
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